literacy4all

What is it?

Blogs are just online, public journals. They are frequently used for editorialized types of journalism. Many bloggers simply type their experiences and things they have learned or discovered for the world to read. Bloggers will often develop followings who read their comments daily much like a newspaper columnist.

Some tips for having students write successful blogs:

Focus content. Have a topic that is engaging and something that they and the audience will want to read about. Content is very important. If they don't have something interesting and meaningful to write about, then they and their readers are going to hate it.
Be mindful of style, voice and tone. Blogging is a conversation. Beginners should start by reading other blogs to learn what works and what doesn't. Avoid jargon and cliches and don't overuse the thesaurus. Find you own voice. Take your posts for a test drive before publishing by speaking your entry aloud. If you struggle to read it, or are speaking unnaturally, you need to edit.
Make your posts easy to scan by including lists, appropriate images, indented quotes, and subheadings. You might also consider using hte inverted pyramid style used by journalists.
Edit your posts. Make srue that your writing is clear, correct and concise. Just because you can write a lot, doesn't mean that you should. Some errors are bound to happen, but remember that you are striving to share your ideas, and grammar, usage and spelling errors only get in the way.
Establish a schedule for your posts. Do you know how often you will post? Readers will appreciate a reliable schedule
Link to other sites. Share your discoveries and build the blogophere. Consider finding something else to share if loads of people have already linked to it....The first link is hte one most people click on, so it should also be the main link for your article. Avoid including too many links that are too close to each other.
Credit sources with a blurb and link. This builds credibility and reciprocity.
Use comments to continue conversations. Invite your audience to comment, but be sure to manage the comments. If someone has legitimate criticism of something you've produced, pay attention--it's worth considering. On the other hand, criticism that is petty or nasty should just be ignored.

What can I do with blogs in my classroom?

Have students examine a person or character by posting a series of blogs from the perspective of that individual. Set criteria that force them to really engage in understanding the individual's motivations and experiences.
Have students generate discovery logs in which they are expected to post content and an explanation of things they have discovered that are related to the content being explored in class.
Have students voice opinions about issues and topics that come up in class. Set criteria for them to include information, citations, links to pages, etc.
If you use reflection journals in class at all, make them digital. Have the kids enter a daily or weekly reflection on content covered in class. If you want, allow other students to reply to posts which will allow them to point out each other's errors or areas of disagreement.
During a research assignment, have students post regular blogs that will serve as a research journal. You can require them to detail summaries of findings, stumbling block, solutions and sources.
Create a unit or chapter review blog. You can make different students responsible for the blog at various points in the course and have other students point out relevant areas that are missed.
Have students post a portion of or all of a writing assignment for class and have their peers peer review and comment on the blog.
Practice journalism. Have students attempt to explore or uncover a local issue and post their findings.
Have students post hypotheses for an experiment prior to completing it, then they can post actual results and compare them to the original hypothesis.